


Tourists (Of a Sort)

by Scrawlers



Series: To Devour the Sun [1]
Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Anime)
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-26
Updated: 2016-09-26
Packaged: 2018-08-17 12:31:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8144152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scrawlers/pseuds/Scrawlers
Summary: Gladion has never been fond of tourists, and when a tourist girl named Manon decides to stalk him and her tourist older brother Alan has his charizard deposit Gladion on the side of a freaking mountain, he decides that he really, really hates them—those two in particular.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was written a little while ago back when Gladion was first announced as a character in Sun & Moon. I adored him from the second I saw him, and that, combined with the thought that perhaps Alan and Manon could cameo in the Sun&Moon anime instead of Dexio and Sina (since Dexio and Sina don’t exist in the anime-verse), inspired this. Manon’s and Alan’s outfits were largely inspired by the glimpse of what we see Dexio and Sina wearing in the trailer, albeit modified to fit their colors and style. (Well, “style” . . . Alan is Sycamore’s son, what can I say. Although, for the record, it was Lizardon who picked out Alan's shirt. Alan just can't say no to Lizardon.)
> 
> I'm sure that everything about Gladion (and the Aether Foundation) contained in this fic will be jossed once the actual games come out, but until then, here's this.

He was being followed.

It wasn’t something most people would have noticed, and in truth Gladion felt that the fact that he was being followed at all was ridiculous. The fact that it was still broad daylight outside aside, even if he didn’t wear the stupid uniform (because he didn’t need it, and couldn’t afford it even if he did) he still thought that the fact that he was a member of Team Skull’s family was fairly obvious to anyone who cared to look at him for more than three seconds. The people of Alola were more than familiar with Skull, and could pick one out at a hundred paces. Most agreed that spotting a Skull was easier than spotting an excited mudsdale. So the idea that someone would follow him—that someone would even _look_ at him for longer than it took to realize that he was a scruffy troublemaker not worth their time, consideration, or table scraps—was so absurd he almost dismissed it.

The problem was that living on the streets for the better part of a year made him keenly aware of his surroundings at all times. Most people avoided Team Skull, this was true; but the Aether Foundation enforcers weren’t “most people,” and he wasn’t just another one of the grunts. Team Skull had to be careful on the regular, unless they wanted to end up behind bars or on the wrong side of a bewear hug. But Gladion? Gladion had much more to worry about.

So when he noticed that he was being trailed down the street after he left the small cove where he trained Null, he was less than amused.

He jammed his hands into the pockets of his hoodie and quickened his pace down the crowded street, weaving around the people who darted out of his path regardless. There was an alley near the end of his current street that connected to the street on the other side, and from there he could loop back around to the Lush Jungle. He had no interest in going back to his cove at the moment—no way did he want to bring a stranger back there if he could avoid it—but if his stalker was that intent on following him, then he could at least get them away from public eye so he could deal with the situation in private.

And it seemed, at least to his perception, that his stalker _was_ that determined to follow him. He made no indication that he was going to turn until the exact second he reached the alley, and even then it was less that he turned and more that he side-stepped into it, pivoting on the ball of his foot once he was in the shadows so that he could make his way down it. His stalker—no doubt thinking they were being sneaky—followed a few paces behind, though he heard their footsteps hasten when he lengthened his strides to just below a run, cutting a sharp turn as he exited onto the second street.

His stalker pursued him to the bitter end. The plus side, Gladion thought as he reached the rocky outcropping at the edge of the Lush Jungle, was that there was only one of them. That meant they were unlikely to be from the Aether Foundation, or were at the very least damn stupid if they _were_ from the Aether Foundation and yet still thought they could challenge him alone. On the not so plus side, reaching his destination with his stalker pursuing him now meant that he had to deal with it, and his knuckles had only just started to heal from his last scrap. He didn’t need this.

But when he whipped around to face the person pursuing him—who, as soon as she saw that he saw her, hastily tried (and failed) to hide behind a nearby tree—his arms dropped back to his sides, and much of the tension left his shoulders.

She wasn’t one of the Aether Foundation’s enforcers, or even some other criminal that thought they could mess with a member of Team Skull and have enough teeth left over to talk about it. Instead, she was a girl about his age with short, dark red hair tied back in a low ponytail and a flower crown draped around her head. A pokémon—a chespin, he was pretty sure, but he couldn’t remember what region it was from—clung to her back, peering curiously over her left shoulder. Her tanktop was bright yellow and had an exeggutor on it, pulled over a dark green undershirt that matched her shorts. Her eyes were concealed by bright pink aviator shades.

Gladion rolled his eyes and swallowed his groan of disgust.

She wasn’t just a girl.

She was a _tourist._

He stared at her flatly, his arms folded across his chest and his weight canted to one side, counting the seconds until she realized hiding was pointless. It didn’t take long; whether it was some measure of self-awareness or her own curiosity that got to her the girl dipped out from behind the tree after only a moment, waving and smiling widely as she said, “Um, hello!”

Gladion didn’t smile back. He glared at her instead as he demanded, “What the hell do you want?”

The smile slipped from the girl’s face with the speed of a thunderclap, her lips falling into an uncertain frown. She exchanged a glance with the chespin on her shoulders before she looked back at Gladion, and she pulled off her sunglasses (passing them to her chespin, who happily plopped them over his spikes) before she smiled again. Her eyes were light brown, and this time her smile looked a little forced.

“Well, I was in the forest earlier and I saw you training with your—your—pokémon?” she said, and she took a few steps closer. Gladion forced himself to stand his ground, his nails digging into his arms. “It looked really . . . interesting! So, hey, I was just wondering what it was, or if I could see it again, because it didn’t look like any pokémon I had ever seen bef—”

“No,” Gladion snapped, and that stopped the girl cold. She was only a few paces in front of him now, within arm’s reach if either of them wanted to try it, and from the look of her Gladion didn’t think she had the guts to dare. It wouldn’t do her any good even if she did. “Null’s not some fun toy for you to ogle at and play with so you have a cool story to take home. You want some of that, go to one of the petting zoos we have all over these islands for people like you.”

The girl withdrew, taken aback. “People like . . . ?” she started to say, but as the chespin on her shoulders began to squeak and sputter angrily, her own face contorted into a scowl. “Hey, what’s with that attitude? I never said your pokémon was a toy or anything like that—I know they’re not! All I said was that I had never seen it before and I wanted—”

“To take a look, right? Because you’re curious, right? Because it’s just so exotic and _different_ , right?” Gladion sneered. She took a step back as he took one forward, and he smirked as her hands curled into fists. “Don’t think I didn’t hear how you hesitated when calling him a pokémon in the first place. I heard that question loud and clear in your voice, chick. You didn’t even think he was a pokémon. You didn’t even think he was _real_.”

“That’s—that’s not true!” the girl said defensively.

“Oh yeah?” Gladion asked. He took another step forward, and she took another back. Another forward, another back. “’Cause it sure didn’t seem that way to me. And it sure didn’t seem like you thought you coulda maybe asked me back there if you were that curious, or maybe you coulda not spied on me in the first place, or maybe you coulda not followed me, or maybe you coulda had some sense and just stuck to your guided tours and safety-roped nature hikes—”

“I just—!”

“You coulda thought a lot of things, but you didn’t, and now you’re here, and me?” Gladion bared his teeth through his smile. “I’m not so good with tourists.”

The girl’s mouth was pressed into a thin line as she stared defiantly back at him, and he had to give her credit where it was due: she showed more spunk than most tourists. But before he could comment on it she looked at something over his shoulder, her eyes widening, and the next thing Gladion knew _something_ grabbed him by the back of his hoodie and hauled him up into the air, holding him firm even as he flailed and thrashed to try and free himself. The pokémon holding him swooped around until it was perched on the rocky outcropping above the dirt trail, dangling Gladion over the edge.

“Good job, Lizardon,” said a new voice, and Gladion looked down (Lunaala, was he not fond of the height he was currently being held at) to see that a new guy had walked up to stand next to the tourist girl. “Just hold him there for a minute.”

The pokémon—a charizard, it was a freaking _charizard_ —holding Gladion by the back of his sweatshirt gave a small roar in response.

The new guy was a teenager, by the look of him—older than both Gladion and the tourist girl, and easily taller than them both (Gladion thought, anyway; it was hard to tell from how high up the charizard was holding him). Stress holes were worn into his denim capris, and the bottoms of his pant legs looked a little frayed. His shirt was electric blue, and an equally as vivid bright orange charizard silhouette was emblazoned across the front, the Alolan Charizard Transport logo encircling it. An out of place, fluffy blue scarf was thrown around his neck, and as he looked up at Gladion, he removed the bright blue aviator sunglasses shielding his eyes and shifted them to the top of his dark black hair instead. The stare he sent Gladion’s way was not friendly. Gladion, despite the disadvantage his current predicament put him in, returned it.

This guy was as much of a tourist as the girl was. He was a tourist. He was a _freaking tourist_ and he had stuck Gladion on the side of a _mountain_.

“Alan!” the girl said, and she beamed up at the teenager standing next to her, whose expression softened (though was no less serious) as he looked down at her. The chespin on her shoulders chirped happily. “Where’d you come from? Weren’t you helping the—”

“You didn’t come back when you said you would, so we got worried,” the teenager—Alan, Gladion supposed his name was—said. The girl’s smile became a bit more sheepish. “Manon, what is going on here?”

The girl—Manon—laughed sheepishly again, and rubbed the back of her neck. “Well, Hari-san and I were exploring the forest like we said we would, and then we saw that guy training a really weird pokémon, so—”

“So you stalked him,” Alan said in a deadpan voice.

Manon puffed her cheeks. “I did not! I just wanted to ask him a few questions—”

“And did he say you could?”

“Well—no, but he left the training area before I could ask, and then he walked too fast so it was hard to catch up—but it was perfectly innocent, I swear!” she said, waving her hands defensively in front of her. Alan crossed his arms. “I was going to leave if he said no, but he didn’t really give me a chance to—”

“I _did_ say no,” Gladion said loudly, and both of them turned back to look up at him. It was about time, considering Alan’s damn charizard was still dangling him from the mountain.

Manon glared up at him. “Yeah, and you were really unnecessarily rude about it. You didn’t even let me finish my question, and you accused me of a bunch of mean things—”

“I didn’t have to let you finish your question!” Gladion snapped. “You shouldn’t’ve been asking it in the first place!”

“There’s nothing wrong with asking questions!” Manon said hotly.

“There is when you’re treating someone else’s pokémon like a damn zoo exhibi—!”

Gladion clapped his hands over his ears as the charizard holding him loosed a sharp, sudden roar, and after he shot an irate glare above him, Gladion looked down to see Alan’s lips quirked in a little smile.

What a bastard.

“Thank you, Lizardon,” Alan said. Gladion glared at him, seething. Oh yes, thank the freaking monster that had just about burst his eardrums. Yeah, that was a super thing to do. Alan turned back to Manon. “Manon, don’t follow people without their permission. You know better than that by now.”

Manon scowled at the grass, her cheeks puffed, her chespin matching her expression. “I was going to stop if he said so, or if he hadn’t followed it up with all of that—”

“Manon,” Alan said. He didn’t raise his voice or make his tone sharp at all, but she still sighed.

“Right, right, okay, okay. I won’t anymore, I promise.” Alan continued to stare at her, and her expression became a little indignant. “I said I promise! What’s that look for?!”

Alan grinned a little, teasing, and said, “Nothing.”

Manon continued to pout at him, but Alan looked back up at Gladion. His expression became decidedly icier (not helped by the shade of his blue eyes), and Gladion stuck his chin out defiantly.

“As for you,” Alan said, “don’t ever treat her like that again.”

“Or what?” Gladion snapped. “What are you gonna do about it, huh? Strangle me in your stupid scarf?”

Alan didn’t rise to the bait. Instead he asked coolly, “Do you really think you’re in a position to find out?”

The honest answer was “no,” and Gladion knew that even before the charizard holding him snorted near enough to his head to ruffle his hair, the exhale sharp and warm. But he didn’t want to give the bastard the satisfaction of the answer, and so he merely continued to scowl down, wondering how much trouble he’d get in if Plumeria found out he had sicced Null on a tourist. He began to care a lot less about the consequences when Alan chuckled.

“Thought so,” Alan said, and Gladion shoved his hand into his hoodie pocket, grasping at Null’s pokéball— “Lizardon, you can leave him up there. Let’s go.”

Gladion froze. “Wait, what? Don’t you—hey!”

The charizard suddenly yanked him back up over the edge and dropped him onto the tiny outcropping, and before Gladion had a chance to grab him swooped back down to ground level. Alan stroked the charizard’s snout before the beast bumped its entire head against Alan’s to nuzzle him, and after a few seconds of that sickening display, Alan recalled him.

“Are we heading back?” Manon asked Alan, and she plucked her sunglasses from her chespin’s head again to put them back on.

Alan nodded, sliding his own shades down over his eyes again as they began to walk away. “Yeah. The professor and Meyer got started on making lunch while Clemont, Bonnie, and I went out to look for you. I’ll ask Lizardon to go find Clemont and Bonnie if they’re not back by the time we are.”

“ _Hey_!” Gladion yelled again. Alan didn’t bother to look back at him, though Manon and her chespin did. “You can’t just leave me up here! Get back here and help me down!”

“You’re a tough guy, aren’t you?” Alan called, still without turning. “I’m sure you can handle it. If not and you’re still there after sunset, Lizardon and I will come help you.”

Manon turned so that she was walking backwards, and tugged down on one lower eyelid as she stuck her tongue out at Gladion, holding the pose for a minute before she grinned and skipped lightly along to walk at Alan’s side.

He hated them. Gladion hated them. He hated them more than he had ever hated any tourists in his entire life, and as he glowered at their retreating backs he swore that he was going to get back at them somehow. Oh sure, Skulls were supposed to leave tourists alone, for the most part, but that bastard and his charizard were _asking_ for it.

Gladion looked down the side of the cliff, and though he knew that neither Guzma nor Plumeria would have felt any fear, and that it wasn’t so high up that he would die (or even be _seriously_ injured, probably) if he fell, he still felt an unpleasant swoop in his stomach.

He would get back at Alan (and Manon, but mostly Alan). This, he swore.

But first he had to figure out how to get down from the damn mountain.


End file.
